Dave kept looking at the ring, turning his hand over and over, when he heard a thud behind the counter.
Frowning, he moved his hand by reflex… and the sound came again.
—Huh…?
He tried again. He turned his wrist and unintentionally pointed toward the wall.
Thud.
Dave swallowed.
With a sharp tug of his hand, something shot out from the wall, falling heavily to the floor in front of him.
Dave jumped back.
On the floor was a kind of doll, similar to a matryoshka. On its surface was carved the figure of a man in a 1930s gangster suit.
—What… is this…?
He crouched down and took it carefully.
As soon as his fingers closed around it, the doll began to glow.
—What?!
The fright was enough for him to drop it immediately, making it fall to the floor with a thud and split in half.
Cockroaches began to emerge from the matryoshka. The floor became covered with black, shiny bodies, moving like a living tide.
—No way…
The swarm reorganized, rising, twisting in the air until it formed a human silhouette.
The man took a clumsy step forward and greedily gasped for air, as if he had just come out from underwater.
—… When am I?
Dave stepped back until he bumped into a shelf.
—N-New York…
The man frowned.
—Not where. The year. You're wasting my time, boy.
He raised the staff he was holding, which glowed with a dangerous light.
Before he could do anything to Dave, a gust of wind hit him square on.
The man was thrown upward and slammed against the shop's glass ceiling, pinned by an invisible force.
—Always so dramatic, Horvath.
Balthazar suddenly appeared, carrying a thick book in one hand. The other was raised, the crystal ring on it glowing as he kept the man suspended.
—I need the matryoshka. Where is that doll?
Dave awkwardly raised his hand and pointed to the object on the floor.
Balthazar stepped forward to reach it, but Horvath reacted first. His staff discharged a burst of energy that crossed the shop like a whip. Balthazar was thrown back and crashed into the other end of the place, breaking a display case in the process.
Both got up almost at the same time.
The shop became a chaos of invisible clashes. Compressed air, force fields, and energy colliding with each other. In one of the impacts, both activated their artifacts at the same time and were repelled in opposite directions.
Horvath tried to get to his feet, but suddenly his staff trembled, slipped from his hand, and flew through the air toward the shop's entrance.
There, a small hand caught it easily.
It was the hand of a boy about six years old, with silver hair and emerald green eyes.
Noah raised his other hand, and the vessel Balthazar had mentioned earlier opened by itself. The lid flew off and the dark interior of the vessel seemed to expand.
Before Horvath could react, the vessel crashed into him.
The impact hurled him directly against Balthazar, who barely had time to turn around. Both were enveloped by a strange magical force emanating from the vessel, which disintegrated their bodies in the air, reducing them to ashes that were absorbed without resistance into the vessel's interior.
A second later, the lid resealed itself, trapping the two sorcerers inside the vessel.
The dust slowly settled in the wrecked shop.
Noah lowered his hand. His eyes moved away from the vessel and lingered for an instant on Dave, who was still frozen in shock, understanding nothing of what he had just witnessed. With a subtle gesture of his hand, he quickly formed a Wood Style jutsu and then spat out a sleeping powder from his mouth that enveloped Dave, who fell unconscious almost immediately after inhaling it.
Without wasting time, Noah unleashed another Wood Style jutsu, and vines rose from the ground, twisting around Dave's body, lifting him and tying him firmly to a wall.
With the path clear, he crouched down and picked up both the matryoshka and the vessel. He held them for a moment, assessing the best way to keep them out of the equation for his next operation. Noah had seen and read too many stories and knew very well the luck of some protagonists of those stories, so he wanted to make sure he left no loose ends. For a moment he considered the 4D pocket, but he remembered the nature of the sorcerers trapped inside those objects: too powerful and unpredictable. He couldn't risk Balthazar freeing himself by some miracle.
With a simple gesture, the Horadric cube appeared before him. He carefully placed both objects inside the cube's safe dimensional space. Then he took the dragon-shaped ring from Dave's finger and also stored it inside the cube. Once inside, the cube's surface glowed softly, confirming that the artifacts and their occupants were stably contained. Noah nodded slightly, satisfied with the decision. There they would be properly sealed, and he could deal with them later without risk of accidentally releasing them.
Finally, he made a gesture with his hand, and thick vines covered the shop's door, sealing the entrance and making impossible the hypothetical case of some intruder casually entering the shop.
Having taken all the measures he could, Noah began to go through the shop, selecting everything that might have some value: magical objects, scrolls, gems, and curious artifacts that might be useful later. Each object was stored in his 4D pocket.
After almost an hour, he returned to where Dave lay unconscious. He picked up the thick Encantus grimoire that lay beside him. He also took the staff he had snatched from Horvath, which, after losing its connection to its master, transformed into its true appearance: a medieval sword with blue gems embedded in its hilt.
Noah opened the Encantus to the page of a particular spell, the Absorption Spell. Horvath originally used this spell in the movie to steal another sorcerer's powers.
His mind quickly processed the symbols and the spell's process.
With the tip of the sword, he gently touched Dave's forehead. Instantly, bursts of blue light began to emerge from the boy's body, converging toward Noah. Each spark of magical energy traveled through the air like a luminous thread, connecting the perfect conduit to his new master.
The blue light connecting Dave to Noah not only transported magical power but also began to reorganize the neural structure of both. Every synapse, every pattern of brain activity, was copied by Noah, while Dave slowly regained a "normal" human brain function. What Noah was doing was, in essence, subtracting from Dave his innate ability to manipulate the surrounding energy, his natural talent for controlling the mana of the environment.